Magazine Article
| March 8, 2017

Why Xellia Revived A Shuttered Pharma Facility

Source: Life Science Leader

By Camille Mojica Rey, Contributing Writer

As he walked through the former home of Ben Venue Laboratories, Niels Lynge Agerbæk didn’t see the previous failures the facility had endured. No GMP violations. No recalls. No FDA-required supervision of drugs in critically short supply. Agerbæk saw only the “good bones” of buildings with lots of potential. He also saw a way for his company, Xellia Pharmaceuticals, to get its products to market faster than if they were to build a much-needed facility from the ground up. “We needed additional capacity to get our products to market.”

Resuscitating a previously used facility is not an easy — nor an inexpensive — task. “There are a lot of unknowns when you start up a facility like this. You shouldn’t do it if you are coming from a cost-saving perspective,” says Agerbæk, Xellia Cleveland’s general manager. The company purchased four of five buildings that once made up Ben Venue Laboratories in Bedford, a suburb of Cleveland. (The other building at the site houses Hikma’s West-Ward Pharmaceuticals.)